To what extent can and should people participate in dealing with the personal problems they bring to consulting professionals? This book presents two alternative models for the conduct of such professional-client relationships as those between lawyers and clients and doctors and patients. One model, called the traditional, prescribes a role of minimal participation for the client. The other, called the participatory, prescribes a role of decision-making shared by the client and the professional. After presenting the two models and their implications, the book systematically tests their validity in a case study of the lawyer-client relationship in the making of personal injury claims. The distinctive feature of this work is a sophisticated and objective test of the traditional proposition that passive clients get better results than active clients. Evidence drawn from a sample of actual cases of personal injury claimants reveals that active clients in fact fare significantly better than passive clients. The book is important and novel in four respects: it offers the first clear and realistic proposal for increasing the control people can have over the complex problems they bring to professionals; it presents concrete evidence that lay participation in complex decision making need not be inefficient; it gives practical advice to clients and to lawyers for dealing with each other more effectively and it presents a comprehensive picture of the actual and often dramatic experiences of accident victims, and what it is like to make a personal injury claim.

With the end of the Cold War, the search for a new international and economic order has begun. In this comprehensive account, Sylvia Ostry provides a critical analysis of an international trade system in the throes of rapid and far-reaching change.

With keen historical awareness, Ostry examines the role of key economic power brokers, particularly the United States, in the reconstruction and reconfiguration of an international economy after World War II. She argues that U.S. policy efforts were so successful that they led to an unprecedented renewal of economic growth, living standards, and education levels in postwar Europe and Japan. Ironically, those same policy successes unintentionally fostered the relative decline of U.S. dominance on the world trade scene as the reduction of trade and investment barriers prompted friction and conflict between different kinds of capitalist systems.

Identifying the historical and legal issues key to postwar trade policy, Ostry has commandingly charted our economic course through the last half of this century and, perhaps, into the next.

"Sylvia Ostry knows this subject as few others do, both as a scholar of international trade issues and a major player in the ongoing negotiations that have created the rules of the trade game. The Post-Cold War Trading System is a fine summary of where we've been and where we ought to be going."—Peter Passell, economic scene columnist for The New York Times